Polaroid of the week: Buddhas galore in Bangkok, Thailand

Last Updated on October 9, 2024

..Between the blaring horns, speeding scooters, whizzing tuk-tuks on the buzzing streets and the overall constant bustle of Bangkok, the Buddhist temples (and there are hundreds of them) provide perfectly peaceful havens to escape it all.

After six months traveling in North America and Europe, our arrival in Thailand’s capital city slapped us with quite a bit of culture shock at first, but we adapted quickly by jumping into a tuk-tuk and touring a few of Bangkok’s beautiful temples, or wats, as they are called in Thai. We would whip along main roads and around back streets in the open-air tuk tuks, only to arrive minutes later to near-silent temples with spectacular golden Buddha statues, known as Buddharūpa, which means Form of the Awakened One. Some wats have a particularly large golden buddhas, as high as 32 meters, either standing or reclining, while others instead have a number of buddhas lined-up together in the cross-legged lotus position, like the ones pictured above.

Watching the Buddhists paying respects and bringing offerings at any hour of day, and witnessing the monks collecting the alms in the early mornings has been like a very easy crash course to this fascinating culture and a great way to begin our travels through Asia.

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